Tyler's mom mails birthday cards a full week early, because Debbie does not trust the post office with anything that matters. Mine came on Tuesday. I opened it at the kitchen table, a $50 bill slid out onto the placemat, and before I'd even read the card I had spent it three different ways in my head.
Then I stopped, because I honestly could not tell you where last year's birthday money went. Or the Christmas money from my grandma. Or the overtime Tyler worked last fall.
The money we couldn't find
So I did something a little painful. I pulled up our checking statements from 2024 and went looking for every dollar that wasn't a regular paycheck. Here's what I found:
- Birthday and Christmas cash from both families: $410
- Two weeks of overtime for Tyler in October: $780 after taxes
- My dad paying Tyler to help put a new roof on his shed: $300
- An old recliner I sold on Facebook Marketplace: $90
- A mail-in rebate on a vacuum: $60
That's $1,640. I could not point to one thing we had to show for it.
It didn't go anywhere bad. It went into checking with everything else and got spent the way regular money gets spent. A little extra at Walmart. A Casey's pizza on a tired Friday. Extra money that lands in the same pile as grocery money just turns into grocery money.
$1,640 won't change anybody's life. But in January we decided we want to buy a house by the end of 2026, and our house fund started this year at $4,200. That missing money would have added almost 40% on top. That's the number that got me.
How the Extra tab works
Our tax refund came in March, $2,860, and for once we had a plan for it before it arrived: $2,400 to the house fund, and the rest for new tires on my CR-V and one dinner out. Watching money go exactly where we said it would felt so good that I wanted the same thing for the small stuff. The refund was easy because it was big and we saw it coming. The $50 in a birthday card is the kind that slips away.
So on March 24 I added a tab to the sheet, our shared budget spreadsheet, and called it "Extra." Any money that comes in that isn't a regular paycheck gets a line: the date, where it came from, how much and where it went. Four columns. Nothing fancy.
We have four rules, and Tyler agreed to all of them over supper without much of a fight. Whoever gets the money writes it down within a day. Coins and $5 bills still go in the pickle jar on the counter, same as always. Everything else gets moved within a week: to the credit card we're paying off this spring until it's gone, and to the house fund after that. And if one of us wants to spend some of it, we have to say so out loud, in the kitchen, to the other person.
That last rule sounds silly. It works anyway. It is very hard to say "I'm going to spend your mom's birthday money on a fourth phone case" with a straight face.
The first three weeks
Here's everything on the Extra tab so far.
On March 26, Tyler stayed late three nights when a line went down at the plant. Six hours of overtime at $36 an hour is $216 before taxes. It showed up on his check as $158, and it went to the credit card that weekend.
On April 3, I got back the $100 deposit on the park pavilion from my cousin's baby shower. I'd put it down because I was the one who remembered to call about the reservation. Mom and I scrubbed the grills and swept the floor, so we got all of it back. That went to the card too.
And on Tuesday, Debbie's $50. I said out loud that I wanted it for new work shoes, since I stand most of every shift behind the pharmacy counter and my old pair is done. Tyler said that counts. So $258 went to the card and $50 went on my feet.
That's $308 in about three weeks. None of it would have been missed if it had quietly disappeared, and that's exactly the problem.
Here's where it all goes from now on. The house fund already gets the big, planned money: whatever's left of the budget each month, plus the $289 that used to go to my car payment, which ended in March. The credit card should be paid off by the end of May. After that, everything on the Extra tab goes to the house fund too, except whatever we say out loud first.
Tyler has also been looking at used push mowers on Marketplace and talking about mowing a few yards this summer. If that turns into real money, it will get its own section on the tab, and a chunk of it will need to be set aside for taxes.
My guess is the tab will be boring most months. That's fine. Boring and written down beats exciting and gone. I'll report back once it has a few months in it.
